KEY POINTS:
It could be a case from Without A Trace - although the fast-paced results of the fictitious television series is nothing like the reality of searching for a New Zealander who has disappeared in the United States.
Leonard Taku, 45, vanished during a holiday to Florida over the
New Year.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was in contact with investigators in the US and had been informed police were working with the FBI.
Mr Taku's family have questioned the effort being put into finding him, and were frustrated by police progress.
A rental car Mr Taku was driving was found abandoned in a secluded forest more than a month ago, but fingerprint analysis is yet to be carried out, his family said.
Mr Taku picked up the luxury Chrysler in Miami on December 18 and extended his rental contract at Tampa International Airport on the 26th.
He was supposed to return the car in Miami on December 31 and return to England to start a teaching job in Kent on January 3.
However, one of his credit cards was used in Orlando at a five-star hotel owned by the Hilton company in mid-January and about three weeks later the rental car was found abandoned in dense forest near the city of Ocala, north of Orlando.
Dolly Niemi said her brother's disappearance was out of character.
She has contacted US officials in New Zealand in an effort for more to be done, but Mrs Niemi was unimpressed with the standard letter the family received from the US Consulate, and contacted the FBI directly.
Mrs Niemi said the agency told the family it could not get involved, although the Foreign Affairs Ministry has been told by Tampa police that the FBI was involved. "It's as slow as a snail. It's horrible," Mrs Niemi said.
Detective Sergeant Liam Clinton, officer in charge of the police missing persons unit, said New Zealand police were in regular contact with Tampa police and offering any assistance, but could not get actively involved.
"Things we would normally do here in terms of finding people, they can be done over there, but they're not as easy or quick because of privacy legislation and procedures they've got to go through to get records."
"We can certainly understand the family's frustration from this end because if it was in New Zealand it would be a lot easier. But if it's overseas and they have different rules and different priorities unfortunately we have to live with that and give them as much as we can from this end."
Trying to trace credit card details or bank transactions, for instance, was more difficult in the US, where authorities had to get a subpoena from a court to access information which in New Zealand could be obtained through co-operation between banks and police.
New Zealand police helped trace the credit card to a hotel business, but their American counterparts need to obtain an investigative subpoena to search hotel records and view any surveillance footage.
The Chrysler rental had been forensically tested and fingerprints discovered inside - but they have yet to be matched to Mr Taku's prints sent from New Zealand.
"That seems to be taking a bit longer. I'm not really blaming them for the delay because I know their problems in terms of their resourcing and the fact is it all takes time," Mr Clinton said.
Most kiwis who go missing overseas turn up safe
Most New Zealanders reported missing while travelling overseas turn up safe and well - their "disappearance" often sparked by a worried family that hasn't heard from their travelling Kiwi.
New Zealand police made inquiries with overseas law enforcement agencies in 29 cases last year and all but one case was "resolved", or the missing people found safe.
Detective Sergeant Liam Clinton, of the police missing persons unit, said police spent four to five weeks tracking a New Zealand man in Chile.
"As we were tracking him down he decided to make contact as well. Some of them just work out that way."
About a dozen other reports were resolved before inquiries were made because people had made contact.
The outstanding case is Blenheim man Kevin Borcovsky, 55, who went missing while researching his family history in Russia.
He was last seen in September in Tynda, a city of 40,000 people in the far east of Russia, where he arrived in harsh winter conditions and bought a ticket to travel further on that night.
But he never turned up for the train. A woman was caught at the train station trying to cash in Mr Borcovsky's ticket using his passport.
Described by Russian police as a beggar, the woman said she found the items in a bag of his possessions. She later died in a fire, Mr Clinton said.
Forests around Tynda would "thaw out" around May and June, and local police would carry out a search but there had been no fresh leads.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that of the 57 "whereabouts" inquiries it had dealt with in the year to March 1, 13 cases were "open".
